Recently, I participated in an external review of the University of Toronto Scarborough’s Management (B.B.A.) Program. In a nutshell, a bunch of students gave their feedback to three representatives from Harvard, Dalhousie, and Sauder. The whole point is to improve the status and quality of the Management Program. There was some great feedback about the program as well as some constructive criticism on how to improve it.

My issue was that some of the students at the review seemed to blame the university for their misfortunes or lack of effort. There were students complaining that the Management Program does not provide enough support for graduating students, yet, our campus has a Career Centre and online job postings available. Some students proposed that Management students should have a separate career centre to focus on business-related jobs. Seriously? That’s a lot of resources for a segment of our campus. Not really worth it’s weight in resources. My honest opinion is that the university actually does a great job of preparing graduating students. There’s seminars and workshops to prepare you as well as individual appointments with career counselors. While this information is usually not specific to management students, you can definitely take the overall content and use it in your applications. Plus, there are tons of professors at UTSC who would be more than willing to help you target your resume for a specific industry or provide advice. I’ve met professors who would literally sit down and go through a 30+ page business plan for you if you asked! In life, no one is going to spoon feed you, university should be no different. It’s up to you to actually find the information that you need. Anyone can jump online and search “finance resumes” for tons of advice. Combine that with general advice, knowledge from industry professionals, and you’ve likely got a stellar job application.

Someone I worked with once told me not to take my lawn chair out just yet, to stay hungry. Great advice. If you’re always looking for the next opportunity, you’re always learning and absorbing information. If you really want to break into a career in marketing/finance/accounting/etc., you’ll do whatever it takes to get there. That is taking responsibility for your own destiny.